Author: The Literific

The Literary & Scientific Society is the debating society at Queen's University Belfast. We meet every at 7pm, Thursday evening during term time in the QUB Senate Room - you can be kept up to date with our website, Facebook and Twitter!

Greetings one and all!
Today marks the beginning of a new era for the Literific – the start of the 170th Session! This year’s Annual General Meeting took place on the 13th of March 2018 and saw Mr Hugh Dobbin elected as our next President. The new Council for the 170th Session are as follows:

President: Hugh Dobbin

Secretary: Matthew Bradley

Treasurer: Shea Glasgow

Internal Convenor: Matthew Bryson

External Convenor: Tara Grace Connolly

Outreach Officer: Chloe Ferguson

Technology Officer: Jake Kieran

Training Officer: Russell Nairn

Social Officer: Edmund Doherty

Congratulations to the new Council who no doubt have a shining year ahead of them!

Good afternoon, everyone! I have some rather irritating news to bring to your attention, unfortunately. If you have been a paid-up member this year then please pay attention, this is directed at you specifically. Otherwise, feel free to just ignore this.

Despite our best efforts to convince them that it is not something worth pursuing, the S.U. has decided to enforce the rule in the S.U. Constitution saying that the Executive members (President, Secretary, Treasurer) of a Society committee must be students at Queen’s; so even though I did my undergrad here and I am starting a Masters here in September, because I literally can’t enrol onto that Masters until September and therefore I’m not technically at Queen’s right now, they say I can’t hold the position of President.

Now, to be clear, I am not worried about this, the Council is not worried about this, and you should not be worried about this. This will in no way affect the running of the Society, period. I’m sure most of you already know that we had a debate two days ago, our Internal Meeting is on Monday, and we are having a joint debate with the DragonSlayers at Q-Con in a week and a half, so everything is proceeding normally.

The only issue is that they have told us to call an EGM. We had planned to just ignore them and hope that they would forget over the Summer or, failing that, stall until the Autumn so that I could just be immediately re-elected once I’ve re-enrolled, but the problem with that is that they have also told us they will freeze our account at the Finance Office if we don’t hold one this side of the Summer. Like I said, irritating.

Obviously I can’t allow the Society to go for three or four months without access to it’s money, so we need to placate the Union. I have spoken with someone who outranks the people forcing us to do this (not going to say who because I don’t want to cause them any trouble) and I have been told two things of note: first is that the Union has no requirements for the number of people who need to be in attendance at an EGM for an election to be deemed valid, and second is that the Union has no authority to stop any member of a Society committee from delegating any amount of their work to someone else.

Therefore, I do hereby call an EGM to fill the position of President of the Society, which the Union considers to be empty. The EGM will take place two weeks from today at 16:00 in the Senate Room (if we can get it, if not we’ll keep you posted).

It is my understanding that Mr Matthew Bradley, hero of the AGM and unofficial Society Meme-Meister, intends to stand for the role. Of course, it is entirely possible that he may be unprepared for the role, in which case I will of course do anything, and indeed everything, he asks of me. I also have a funny feeling that he will tire of the responsibilities of the role by about, let’s say, the first day of the next academic year and will stand down allowing me to step back in, but who’s to say? Also, I know this is a very inconvenient time for most of you for an EGM to be held but remember, even if only five people are there the Union will have to accept the results and give us back access to our money, so if you can’t make it then it’s nothing to worry about.

I do hope we’re all on the same page here, that page being that this is little more than a minor, if irritating, inconvenience being forced upon us by the S.U. Of course, we can’t have the Union finding any more reasons to invalidate another Presidential election, so if you’d like to nominate yourself for the position of President then please send an email to president@literific.org containing said nomination along with the name of another member who will second the nomination. Please note, only paid-up members of the Society (although technically if the Union thinks my term as President began on June 1st then they should also think that the 169th session began on June 1st as well, which means we have no paid-up members yet…) who are also current students at QUB are eligible to stand, second, and vote in this election.

If you’d like any more information about this situation I urge you to contact either myself or any other member of the new Council. We will all be happy to explain it to you in great detail…
Anyway, sorry about all this but once again I assure you that as far as our Constitution is concerned nothing untoward has occurred and therefore the Council shall be continuing on as normal. Thanks for reading!

After quite possibly the longest (and craziest) AGM in Literific history taking place on the 3rd of April, the council for the 169th session has been elected! A huge thank you to everyone that voted; we are now well prepared for the year to come 🙂